it’s official. i live in texas and my parents are gone and my brother and his wife are gone and the dear friend and her little babe are gone and it’s just me and the kiddos and texas. and i’ve been killing spiders (even though i don’t normally kill spiders, it sort of breaks my heart to kill spiders) but they just look so much more sinister here…. or maybe because there are so many more of them…. ?

it’s been so strange (overwhelmingly strange) to make this move, and not just because of the alarming plethora of bugs. (what in the world is the point of flying crickets big enough to be mistaken for bats?) this is the first place that has completely baffled me in terms of making friends. what do you do when you’re in a neighborhood of people who don’t go outside? and go to church with so many people (hundreds and hundreds) no one has time to say hello to you? and spend time on an air force base that is simply mammoth? truth is, i feel like i’m in a pillow fight with loneliness. only loneliness has a pillow twice the size of mine and it keeps whapping and whapping me and it isn’t laughing, it’s just whapping. which, as you may know, isn’t much of a pillow fight.

so. i’ve been doing what i always do. reading. (i am an escapist to the last.) and boy, do i have a story for you. if you liked the hunger games then read the house of the scorpion. it has a lot of the same elements as the hunger games but actually has character development and something of a less linear plot. the last page was a let-down, but the rest of it was so compelling it didn’t bother me too much. and once you’re finished with that one, read operation yes. i’m not sure if it’s because i’m new to this whole military thing or because i’m in a sort of tender emotional state right now, but this book got me in the gut. i sobbed. and i loved it. and i read it an afternoon. and now i know all sorts of things about the acronyms that get thrown around down at lackland that i didn’t know before.

and, in case you thought i forgot, i haven’t forgotten. we’ll get the book review up for july’s book trail read. you can understand, right? it’s been a crazy few months. and sometimes my crazy seeps into other things.

i’m up to my eyeballs in boxes and garbage. (did you know that if you have a professional moving company and you’re not there to say “what the… ?” they will, in fact, pack your garbage.?.) and i keep looking at lovely spaces like this or this and sighing and thinking, “i’m going to make my house like that.” and then i start and the kids put their hands in the paint or i have to stop in the middle to make dinner and do bedtime and then there’s laundry everywhere because i’m DIYing instead of keeping on top of the mundane. so. to make all the rest of you in the world who find project blogs depressing, i’m about to post some real life photos. photos where i didn’t even put away the vacuum. because we could all use a little more reality and a little less of people who relocate belly buttons with photoshop.

i’ve been a texan for a few weeks now. i have a pool pass, a military ID, a mental note to say “y’all” as often as i can. i eat blue bell ice cream. i skitter from one air conditioned building to another. i live in a big house in a big city in an even bigger state.

i haven’t, however, bought one of those “texans don’t call 911″ t-shirts with a screen-printed rifle. [there's nothing like a dose of texas to make you feel like a democrat. and nothing like a while in ann arbor to make you feel like a republican.]

i feel surprisingly at ease here. i will never ever get sick of fresh tortillas. [never ever.]

henry still asks nearly every day when we can go home. i assume he means michigan. but he might mean colorado. i’m not even sure that he knows. maybe he’s sick of these perennial stacks and stacks and stacks of boxes. [how is it i can spend day after day unpacking and nothing seems to change... ?]

i have all sorts of things i want to write, but the heat index today is over a hundred and that seems to stop my brain short. i just wanted to say hey, y’all and let y’all know that i’m alive [although woefully behind on correspondence and important things].

1. the fourth of july is not just a holiday, it’s a HOLIDAY.
2. you should paint your toenails.
3. it’s hot. really really hot.
4. there are fresh tortillas in the grocery store.
5. right next to the tortillas, there is fresh guacamole.
6. it is hard to make a big house look clean.
7. there are maggots in the garbage can.
8. fire ants really do bite. and swarm. and all that.

first, let me say, you shouldn’t read this post if:

1. you loved loved loved “catching fire.”
2. you haven’t read “catching fire” but you want to.
3. you like eating pickled herring.
4. you can’t stand my book snobbery.

so. i finished “catching fire” last night. and i hated it. i really really hated it. i almost just quit reading it, but my neighbors were having an exceptionally loud block party with an exceptionally loud [drunken] guitarist and i couldn’t sleep and the only book on my nightstand was “catching fire.”

let me tell you why i hated it. first up, katniss. i hate her. i felt like her naivete and boorishness and just plain idiocy was somewhat excusable in the first book, but here in the second i wasn’t buying her bizarre sort of innocence for a second. you can’t tell me that someone who survived the hunger games, even if she is only seventeen, would be that far removed from reality. i mean, the girl did not notice anything going on around her. and for a skilled hunter, that just seems odd at best and poorly conceived at worst. this all [might] be excusable if her character was somewhat likeable. but [and i'm shielding my head from arrows as i type] i like katniss about as much as i like bella swan. yeah. that’s not much. get those two together for tea and crumpets and everyone would drown in boredom.

second, i was annoyed [angry?] that all the characters registered so flat in this second installment. if you ask me, collins got lazy and expected all the character development from the first novel to carry through to the second. not so. if anything, what little reality and substance katniss and peeta had in the first book is lost in the second. i have trouble deciding if i care about either one of them.

third, did anyone else feel like they were reading a really disturbing and grotesque version of “the truman show”?

fourth, why, oh why, did this book have to be so much like the first? why did i have to read about another killing spree in the arena? why? why? why?

sigh. diatribe over. if you loved it, go ahead. tell me why.

[ps - yes. i am going to have to read the sequel. the last line was enough to make me wonder if something interesting, new, and intriguing could happen in the third book.]